Outside the Lines (29 page)

He reached over and took my hand. “Come look.”

“Here,” Rita said, taking Jasper’s leash from my grasp. She grinned from ear to ear. “I’ll hold on to this fella.”

Jack led me over to the lot and pointed to a stack of weathered railroad ties over by the brick wall. “See? We’ll be able to build raised beds with those. A friend of mine over at the train station gave them to me for free.”

“Okay,” I said, drawing the word out. I looked at the railroad ties and then back at him. “I still don’t get it.”

He grabbed my shoulders and turned me around to face the corner off to our left, which was taken up by an enormous pile of yellow-netted bags filled with flower bulbs. “It’s the new Garden of Eden,” he said. “I checked with the nursery and since we haven’t had our first freeze, it’s not too late to get the bulbs in the ground. I’m going to leave a few of the beds empty so the clients can help plant some vegetables next spring. Maybe some tomatoes and corn.” He squeezed my hand. “It gets great sun back here and I’ll have to put up a fence with a lock so people don’t just come in and steal from it, but I think it’s a great use of the space, don’t you?”

For a minute, I couldn’t speak. He wasn’t breaking up with me. He was giving me a gift. One more meaningful than anything else I’d ever received.

Jack leaned over and kissed my cheek. “Don’t you like it?” he asked.

I pressed my lips together and nodded briskly. I looked at him, hoping my eyes conveyed the emotion I felt. My heart ached, but I couldn’t tell whether it was more from the pain of the argument with my mother or the happiness I felt seeing the garden. I threw my arms around his neck and pushed my mouth against his ear. “I love it,” I whispered. “Thank you.”

He pulled back and kissed me. “My pleasure.”

“You did all of this this morning?”

“I’ve been thinking about doing it since we found your dad’s painting in the basement and you told me the story of how you two planted your garden. But I had some help getting it started.” He shifted and nodded his head toward Rita, who was crouching down and scratching Jasper’s belly. She looked up and gave me a thumbs-up sign and another huge grin. I waved and smiled back, then gave Jack a playful smack on his shoulder.

“So,” I said, “when I was here yesterday you already knew what you were going to do with the lot and you didn’t tell me?”

He shrugged innocently. “I wanted to get the beds in first, but after the morning you had with the letters from your dad and having to talk with your mom, I thought you could use something positive. A few clients volunteered to clear out the rest of the garbage and Tom brought in the topsoil from the nursery. It still needs a lot of work, but I thought maybe we could get the bulbs in this afternoon.” He smiled. “But we do have one problem.”

I looked at him quizzically. “Oh yeah? What’s that?” At that point, I wasn’t sure I could handle another problem.

“I’ve never planted a garden before. I’m excited to see how it turns out.”

“Well,” I said, hearing my father’s low-timbred voice as I repeated the same lesson he’d taught me so long ago, “good things come to those who wait. I’ll show you how to start.”

When my mother first told me she was pregnant, I didn’t believe her. I understood the basics of how babies got made, but I couldn’t imagine she’d actually allowed John to do that to her. Really, I couldn’t imagine anyone doing anything so completely gross, but picturing John doing it to my mother was especially disturbing. I also didn’t believe that she loved him and he had asked her to marry him, which was what she told me after she said she had a little brother or sister for me growing in her belly.

“He’s a wonderful man, Eden,” she said. We were sitting in the dining room, eating the grilled cheese and tomato soup I’d made us for dinner, when she got home from work. “He’s been there for me so much over the past few months. I don’t know what I’d do without him.”

I didn’t look at her, instead used my spoon to toy with the bright red liquid in my bowl. “What if Dad comes back?” I said in a low voice. I lifted my gaze and stared at her defiantly. “What if he comes home and you’re with someone else?”

Her expression fell and she sighed. “Your dad and I are divorced, honey. He’s not coming back.”

“How do you know?” I asked, challenging her. “You don’t know. He could just be stuck in the hospital. He could be really sick and you wouldn’t even know because you divorced him.”

“We divorced each other, Eden. I know it’s hard for you to understand, but it’s really much better this way. Your father and I weren’t good for each other. He wasn’t good for you, either. You saw that. No one who was good for you would do what he did.”

“Yes, he
was
good for me,” I said stubbornly. My daddy was sick, that was all. He didn’t mean what he’d done. He was just very, very sick. I didn’t blame him for cutting his wrists. I couldn’t dream of the kind of pain he must have suffered that pushed him to that point. I told myself that the doctors were still making him well. That he’d get out of the hospital and come take me away.

“John adores you, you know,” my mother said, interrupting my thoughts.

I was silent. I hated John. I hated him with his big feet and his loud laugh and his stupid jokes about how many firemen it took to put in a lightbulb.

“Don’t you like him?” my mother asked.

I still didn’t answer. I stared at my soup, thinking how closely it matched the shade of my father’s blood, spilled on the bathroom floor. My eyes filled. “I don’t want you to have a baby,” I cried.

My mother reached over and rested her hand on my arm. “I understand it might be difficult for you at first, sweetie, but I think if you give the idea of being a big sister a chance, you’ll grow to love it.”

“Will the baby live with John instead of us?” I asked hopefully. I saw this as a possible compromise.

“No, it won’t. I’m going to marry John and we’re all going to live with him.”

I swung my gaze up to her face. “I don’t want to leave our house!”

She sighed again, pulling her hand back to rake back her blond hair from her face. “There are too many bad memories for us here. It’ll be a fresh start for all of us. You, me, John, and the baby. I promise, everything’s going to be better than ever.”

I didn’t believe her. I didn’t want to leave my memories in this house. I wanted to take them with me, leaving a trail of them for my father to find when he finally came back to save me.

After just over six months in the locked ward, David left the state hospital with fifty bucks, thirty days’ worth of meds, and the clothes on his back. He meandered down the long driveway toward the road, unsure exactly where he should go. The divorce papers made it clear his marriage was over, and the only other place he knew he might be welcome was Rick’s house. After an hour-long bus ride, David was there.

“Sure, man,” Rick said. “You can stay here awhile.”

David nodded his thanks and offered to cook all of Rick’s meals and promised to keep the house cleaned up. The life-skills class he had been forced to sit through at the hospital for the last month emphasized the importance of cleanliness—for his body and his surroundings. Back in July, after he’d already spent almost two months in the hospital, David wrote Eden the first of five letters, telling her how sorry he was for what he put her through. He told her how much he loved her. When the letters came back marked “Return to Sender,” David shoved them into the one small box he kept with him, full of Salvation Army clothes and a few books. She didn’t want to see him. That much was clear. And at his core, David didn’t blame her.

Rick’s pot customers weren’t always comfortable with David sitting in the house all day, as a possible witness to their drug deals, so after making breakfast each morning for a few months, David headed downtown to Pioneer Square. He found he liked the noise of downtown Seattle, the constant distraction it provided. Especially since he had stopped taking his medication and the fiends had taken up residence in his head again. He found himself muttering as he sat in Pioneer Park, pacing back and forth on the small patch of grass where other men often sat and wasted the day away.

“You got a home, man?” one of them asked David one late fall day. The man was tall and thin like David, but with shaggy blond hair and sunken blue eyes. He wore a black trench coat and ratty cargo-style jeans.

David shook his head briskly and continued to pace. A voice in his head spoke to him.
Don’t talk to him
.
He’ll try to kill you.

“You can crash with me,” the man said. “If you’ll give me your shoes.”

David walked away. He saw a little girl with long, black hair standing on the corner and he took off after her. “Eden!” he cried. “It’s Daddy!” The little girl didn’t turn her head. Eden was ignoring him, just like she had with the letters he’d sent. He needed to talk to her. To tell her the reason he stayed away. That he was only protecting her. She didn’t answer his letters, but now she was here, looking for him.

The man with the little girl whipped around when David’s hand landed on the little girl’s shoulders. There was fury in the man’s dark eyes, and he grabbed David’s hand and pulled it away from where it lay.

“What the
hell
do you think you’re doing?” the man said through gritted teeth. “Get your hands off my daughter!”

David shook his head. This man was obviously confused. “She’s mine. My daughter. You
took
her from me.” The little girl cowered, curling into the man’s side. “Eden? Bug?” The little girl began to cry, and David backed away. Now he was hurting her again. He couldn’t keep doing this.
Oh god. What is wrong with me?

His blood began to race in his veins, pumping hot and furious. He grabbed his long, dark hair, pulling at his scalp until he felt tufts beginning to yank free. The pain didn’t work anymore. It didn’t soothe the screaming in his head; it didn’t snap him back to reality.
I can’t do this. I can’t. I need to get well again so Eden will want me back.
David took off running again down the street, across three lanes of traffic, all cars blaring their horns at him as they were forced to slam on their brakes to keep from smashing into him. He thought maybe he should let them.

David ran. He ran toward the waterfront, beneath the viaduct. Night began to fall, the air a fluttery purple around him. He ran until his lungs burned like fire in his chest, until his leg muscles were rubbery and loose. He didn’t know what he was running from. Himself, maybe? The wildness starting to ache in his flesh again?

Turning into an alleyway, David slowed down enough to see a cardboard box the size of a washing machine next to a dirty green Dumpster. It was cold and starting to rain. All David wanted was to feel warmth. To sleep, to escape the churning thoughts that blared in his head. He crawled inside the box and curled up fetal, tucking his hands beneath his cheek as a pillow. He closed his eyes and rocked back and forth, back and forth, until sleep came and rescued him from the cold, dark night.

A week later, David went back to Rick’s to grab the letters he’d written to Eden. He tucked them, along with a change of clothes and the five hundred dollars Rick gave him when David told his friend he was leaving, into a green backpack he’d found in a downtown alley. The last letter that had come back to David informed Eden he was thinking of leaving Seattle, and maybe he would. He was finally in charge of what he would do.

It was terrifying at first, not having a house to return to each night. But during the days, on the streets, he talked to people who didn’t seem to care about his rambling speeches or his dark, villainous moods. He found out about the soup kitchens where he could get a hot meal and the shelters where if he got there early enough, he could have a bed for the night. He learned where he could take a shower and where it wasn’t safe to hang out. He watched the way other men and women panhandled on the street corners but couldn’t bring himself to do the same. Instead, he used some of the cash Rick had given him and purchased a used easel and a sketch pad. Going back to his roots, he charged to sketch portraits, and some days he even made enough to pay for a cheap hotel room. He always made enough for a bottle of booze, which, for the most part, kept the fiends in his head at bay.

The lack of rules and boundaries appealed to David. No one to tell him what medicines to take or ways he shouldn’t behave. He danced if he felt like it or climbed beneath a blanket for days. David got the idea in his head he should head to California, where it was always sunny. He didn’t have to ask permission. He didn’t have to do anything other than bag up his things and stand by the side of the road with a sign that said
san francisco
. Eventually, a car came along that gave him a ride to Portland, then one to Ashland, and finally, he arrived in the City by the Bay.

Day by day, gradually, he kept himself busy enough doing nothing that he didn’t feel the gaping hole in his chest that missed his daughter. He filled it with vodka or cheap wine, with meaningless banter with other men who knew what it was to have their minds betray them. He ran his fingers over the angry red raised scars on his wrists, the left one much worse than the right, and forced himself to blank out the memories of the daughter he left behind.

He stopped resisting the twisted thoughts that rose inside him, allowing them to come and go as they pleased. He felt no pressure to be someone other than exactly who he was in each moment. For the first time in his life, David felt free.

“You can’t miss Thanksgiving, sis,” Bryce said two weeks after my fight with my mother. My brother and I were standing in my living room; he had come over to pick up another dinner for a date, though I doubted it was for the same girl. I’d made up this meal in advance and put it in a picnic basket complete with a bottle of sparkling cider and wineglasses. Though Bryce looked at least twenty-one, and I’m sure could have gotten a bottle of wine if he wanted it, I wasn’t going to encourage the behavior.